MOVIE REVIEW: “X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST” Bryan Singer
Directed by
Produced by
Lauren Shuler Donner Bryan Singer Simon Kinberg Hutch Parker
Screenplay by Simon Kinberg Story by
Jane Goldman Simon Kinberg Matthew Vaughn "Days of Future Past"
Based on
by Chris Claremont John Byrne
By Phil Seahorn June 6th, 2014
Starring
Hugh Jackman James McAvoy Michael Fassbender Jennifer Lawrence Halle Berry Anna Paquin Ellen Page Peter Dinklage Ian McKellen Patrick Stewart
THIS COULD HAVE BEEN MY GENERATIONS’ ”WATCHMEN”. Alas, the state of Hollywood and its production of big budget, comic related movies is such that Bryan Singer really didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of bringing this 35 year old saga to the big screen and
keeping it real with the fan boys, while putting enough asses in seats to make a profit. The movie gives you your ticket’s worth and a helluva lot more at the beginning of the movie, and the first twenty minutes of this movie is fucking amazing. After 14 years of the “X-Men” franchise, we FINALLY get to see all out war between mutants and Sentinels. The mutants from the future, as well as Iceman, Storm, Magneto, and Professor X are presented in full power mode, setting the stage for what would appear to be a movie that would make a fan boy weep, and the regular movie crowd go apeshit, alla the reaction to Marvel’s Avengers movie, where the crowd participated. Now, I know when I went to see it at the Galleria on a Friday morning, only 17 people where in the theatre, si I saw this movie like a private screening. This gave me a chance to really study this movie. Almost a week later, I’m still puzzled as to exactly how I should approach this review. The movie had such monumental highs (the opening battle between the mutants and the first “official” onscreen appearance of the Sentinels) and some lows that would take you all the way down into Hell. (The fucking ending of the movie and the “teaser” end of credits scene). Throw logic and comic book canon COMPLETELY out the fucking door for this movie. I know Singer had to acquiesce to Hollywood because these comic book movies are just not doing that well. Many people, lay moviegoers and people in the comic industry are looking at this movie as the linchpin momentum between “The Avengers” and “Batman Returns” (the best of the Nolan franchise) and the sequels to
“The Avengers” as well as the Batman/ Superman franchise coming up. They wanted to keep the movie goers’ adrenalin hyped for superhero movies. “Captain America” did good, and actually kept people hyped during the later part of winter and the early part of spring 2014 (very nontraditional release dates for comic related movies), which would guarantee asses in seats for this movie. But what was served up to us in this movie, well, here comes my first bi-polar review. As a standalone MOVIE, it was incredible. Action, CGI, music, and the ACTING. Everyone in this fucking movie brought their “A-Game”, even the extras! This is by far the best ACTED superhero movie EVER. Michael Fassbender as the young Magneto showed the anger and resentment toward being persecuted for “being different” that has been portrayed in the comic book series for fifty years now. Never mind the fact that, logically, every mutant (if super powered beings that were mutated at birth existed in the real world) would be a WMD, and in this movie, we get to see the full extent of just how powerful Magneto is. But what got me was showing just how EVIL the young Magnet was, and how much he HATED the persecution of the humans toward mutant kind in the film. This is a character that, in comic book canon, dumped the entire team of X-Men into the bowels of an active volcano. Talk about wanting to kill a motherfucker. Fassbender bought that to the screen in his performance, as well as the very complicated relationship between Charles and Magneto, two sides of the same coin.
With that said, the movie just had too many inconsistencies, and some just straight “WHAT THE FUCK” moments that just ruined the film for me. Now, I know the cats in Hollywood, the big daddies, are still scratching their heads at even making the comic book movie franchise profitable, let alone actually being consistent in creating good comic book movies. Josh Whedon was at the helm of the making of “The Avengers”, which is the key element in the comic book movie industry: let a motherfucker that’s actually WRITING comics have some power over a fucking comic book movie. I know there is the ego element, of Hollywood professionals being involved in something that less than ten years ago was still consider a “genre” thing in comic books being made into movies. And I also know that, for some strange fucking reason, Hollywood feels the need to add “realism” into the movie, because we as dumb fuck moviegoers really WOULD BELIEVE that a man can fly, or shoot beams out of his fucking eyes, because if it WASN’T real, we wouldn’t go see it. Well, I say, FUCK YOU HOLLYWOOD, we know we’re watching a fucking comic book movie. It said so, on the marquee advertising the movie in front of the fucking movie theatre. Let me use this, for example: would YOU go see a “live action” Disney movie? ( Oh wait, they got that shit on ice). Okay, another analogy: This kid at Disneyland saw Mickey Mouse for the first time and screamed his ass off, scared shitless. Why? Because he didn’t see a cuddly Disney character come to life.
What the kid saw was a six foot fucking rat coming his way. Hollywood, please: don’t have Hollywood script writers rewrite shit that has ALREADY been written (even fucking STORYBOARDED, for Christ sake) to make a comic book movie, just make the comic book movie based on what has ALREADY BEEN WRITTEN. “The Avengers” had a lot of shit from canon, and it worked. With “X-Men: Days of Future Past”, they didn’t. SEAHORN MOVIEMETER: “B-“: it COULD have been a contenda’